This article demonstrates how you can upload the components of Microsoft’s sysprep utility to your Virtual Center server and then use it for fast, automated virtual machine provisioning.

Once you have installed Virtual Center and set up your first virtual machine from your standard build documentation, you may want to use this new virtual machine as a template or clone to create many others.

Virtual Center supports the cloning of virtual machines and can also prepare the virtual machine for cloning by using Microsoft’s sysprep utility. 

Here is how it is done: 

1. Logon directly to the desktop of your Virtual Center server, when Virtual Center installs it creates a number of directories within the ‘allusers’ profile which will need to be populated with the sysprep components.  In this case, we have copied all of the sysprep binaries to the svr2003 folder ready for cloning our server 2003 virtual machine.  You will find the sysprep utilities on your Windows 2003 server disk under the \support directory or you can download them here.

2. Once obtained, the binaries must be copied into the location as shown here.

3. Logon to the Virtual Center server using the virtual infrastructure client then highlight your newly created template virtual machine, right click and choose to either clone it to a template or convert to a template (it will then be removed from view)

4. Change the view of the inventory to show virtual machines and templates 

5. Now, highlight the template virtual machine and choose ‘deploy virtual machine from this template’

6. Now because we have uploaded the sysprep components to our Virtual Center server, Virtual Center will guide you through a customization wizard, once you have provided all the information, Virtual Center will build the virtual machine, power it on, join it to the domain, allocate the IP address etc.  First though, give your VM a new name and decide which host to build it on. 

7. Next, select the VMFS partition  

8. Now select customize (this is sysprep doing its stuff)   

9. Now go through the wizard as it asks for the relevant information to build the virtual machine, domain name, location, IP address etc, when you click finish, the virtual machine will be built.  When you are asked if you would like to save the customization, select yes.  

Now that you know how to deploy from a clone with the sysprep components you can do the same through Virtual Centers scheduled tasks. 

Servers can then be scheduled and deployed for when you are at home, eating tea, watching the news, coronation street, eastenders, CBS, desperate houswifes, 24, lost or whatever!

Regards,

Lee Wynne 

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